Roasted Tomato BLT

BLT sandwiches are delicious. One issue that can come up is slippery, squirty raw tomato that makes it hard to eat and enjoy your sandwich. It’s no secret I love roasting tomatoes, and by roasting the tomatoes for your BLT you add great depth of flavor and a pleasant mouthfeel that can only be provided by jammy tomatoes, all the while making your sandwich physically easier to eat and enjoy! This is a recipe for one of my favorite BLT variants. The one improvement, in my eyes, might be the addition of avocado (because avocado is amazing) or a runny egg. Whatever you choose, BLTs are an amazing medium for tasty personalization.

The Core Components

• Bacon of choice
• Bread of choice
• Mayo/spread of choice
• Tomato of choice
• Lettuce of choice

For this BLT, I used uncured turkey bacon, whole wheat sourdough, homemade mayo spread (see recipe below), roma tomatoes, and arugula.

The Spread

• Mayo
• Minced garlic
• Smoked paprika
• Chipotle powder
• Celery salt
• Dried onion
• Ground mustard seed
• Cayenne powder
• Black pepper
• Squeeze of lemon juice

Start with the T

Begin with prepping your tomatoes. If you use small cherry tomatoes, you can roast these whole. With anything bigger, you’ll want to make somewhat thick slices. Toss your tomato (slices) in olive oil and place on a baking sheet. Season with salt and crushed black pepper (and any other seasonings you like). Roast in the oven at 400 degrees until your tomatoes have flattened somewhat and have developed some nice caramelization.

Prep the Other Stuff

While your tomatoes are roasting and toasting, go ahead and cook up your bacon (you can do this in the oven if you want this to be fairly hands-off) and toast your bread.

If you’re making your own spread, go ahead and whip that up as well. That said, regular mayo is a delicious choice all on its own.

Assemble!

Once all your accoutrements are prepped and ready for eating, you get to assemble this delicious little devil. I’m an open-face sandwich type of girl, so I layered mayo spread, arugula, turkey bacon, and jammy tomatoes onto each slice of sourdough. Open-face is also a good call if you go the runny egg route.

And voila, there you have it! A super delicious sandwich that constitutes a full meal and can be eaten for breakfast, lunch, dinner, or midnight snack. I know I said roasted tomatoes are potentially less messy when it comes to eating your BLT, but let’s be real, this might still be a fairly messy yet delicious sando. Trust me, it’s worth it.